Who is it? asked a woman at Copenhagen airport, pressing her face against the window of Terminal C along with several hundred other passengers, perplexed by the sight of a large, shambling, bear-like figure walking gingerly down the steps of the plane from Tokyo.

"Is he being arrested?" asked one young man as the dishevelled figure with a large grey beard and a military-green baseball cap was ushered into a waiting van.

The man in question was Bobby Fischer, the brilliant but bigoted former world chess champion, and he wasn't being arrested, despite the best efforts of the US, which for the past nine months has been demanding that the Japanese government deport him to America, where he faces charges of sanction-busting, tax evasion and money-laundering.

Instead the scene played out was the final act of Fischer's journey to freedom.

The eccentric grandmaster was freed from a detention centre in Japan early yesterday, where he has been held since July after trying to leave the country without a valid passport. He was en route to Iceland - the country that granted him citizenship earlier this week, and the scene of his 1972 cold war showdown against Boris Spassky that made him a star.

But even the prospect of a hero's welcome in Reykjavik could not temper his anger against his native US and Japan.

"I'm sorry to be imposing on Iceland," a tired and haggard Fischer drawled at an impromptu press conference, delivered after a chase around Copenhagen airport by a swarm of about 30, mainly Scandinavian, journalists. "I'm very appreciative of their gesture. It wasn't my intention to impose. I just had to get out of jail.

"You have to fight fire with fire - they are using bullshit words to put me in jail, so I had to use some more bullshit words to get out of jail."

As he stood with his Japanese fiancee, Miyoko Watai - also a chess champion - he unleashed the full torrent of his rage against the Tokyo government, which he accused of "legalised kidnapping".

"The Japanese government are unbelievable hypocrites," he said. "I was watching TV and listening to the radio while in detention in Tokyo, and they are bellyaching endlessly about how the North Koreans kidnapped some people 15 to 20 years ago. Yet they had just kidnapped me! They're monstrous hypocrites."

In Tokyo several hours earlier the scene had been much the same. "I won't be free until I get out of Japan," he told reporters at Narita airport. "It wasn't an arrest, it was a kidnapping cooked up between Bush and [Japanese prime minister, Junichiro] Koizumi. They are war criminals. They should both be hung. I'm very happy to be leaving. Japan is a nice country, but you have a criminal leadership."

He called Japan's ruling party "gangsters," and in one of his trademark anti-semitic outbursts, said the "Jew-controlled" US was responsible for hounding him.

As he walked towards the airport, he made one final defiant gesture, when he turned, unzipped his trousers and acted as if to urinate against a wall.

Fischer was met at Copenhagen airport by Samunder Palsson, 68, an ex-policeman who served as Fischer's bodyguard at the world championship match in 1972. Mr Palsson was a key figure in winning Fischer Icelandic citizenship.

"He is the man who put Iceland on the map," he said. "He is an honorary Icelander and deserves this chance. No one should be locked up for playing chess."

Despite the risk of provoking US ire, Iceland has been waiting expectantly for his arrival. "Fischer is free," read the frontpage headline in Morganbladid.

He was due to be taken to Iceland in a private jet paid for by local businessman Jon Asgeir Johannesson. But fog scuppered the plan, and he took a taxi to an airport in Sweden where the plane was thought to be waiting. Fischer had asked that the plane not land at Iceland international airport which is near a US air base. It was believed to be heading instead for a domestic airport in Reykjavik.

His odyssey was due to end last night where it all began: the Hotel Loftleide, where he stayed when he beat Spassky.

He said yesterday he did not expect to spend all his time in Iceland. Although he likes hot springs and seafood - which Iceland has in abundance - there are suggestions he dislikes the climate and long winter nights and wants a second home in southern Europe.

As an Icelandic citizen, in theory he cannot be deported to the US. Icelandic law does not recognise his alleged sanctions-busting in 1992, when he played a return match with Spassky in the former Yugoslavia, nor his alleged US tax evasion.

He admits he has not paid US taxes since 1976, but claims property taken by police in a 1981 raid on his Pasadena warehouse more than offsets unpaid taxes.

Yesterday he said he was "finished" with playing chess, and inveighed against what he says is Jewish domination of the game.

Fischer ended by apologising for his appearance. "I didn't shave at all in prison," he said. "But I'm going to get it off now."

The road to exile

1943 Robert James "Bobby" Fischer born in Chicago

1957 Becomes youngest ever senior US champion, aged 14

1958 Becomes youngest grandmaster at the time, aged 15

1972 Beats Boris Spassky of the USSR in Reykjavik, becoming the first American world champion

1975 Loses title to Anatoly Karpov after refusing to play championship match. Does not play chess in public for nearly 20 years

1981 Held for 48 hours on suspicion of bank robbery, later produces a pamphlet called I Was Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse!

1992 Challenges Spassky to rematch in Montenegro, at the height of Yugoslavia civil war. Reported to have earned £1.8m for match, which broke UN embargo

1993 Indicted by a grand jury in Washington for "trading with the enemy"

1996 Launched a new game, Fischerandom Chess, in which the major pieces on the back rank are randomly shuffled behind their pawns

2001 Told Filipino radio that September 11 terrorist attacks were "wonderful news"

July 2004 Detained at Narita airport near Tokyo for allegedly using a revoked US passport while trying to board a Japan Airlines flight to Philippines

August Japan's justice minister rejects Fischer's appeal to remain and orders him deported